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Source: ONE News -
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The hospitality industry is calling for people who operate restaurants to be subjected to more stringent vetting following the case of a restaurateur fined for sexually harassing a gay worker.
Hospitality workers made up 10% of workplace sexual harassment complaints to the Human Rights Commission in the last two years and in the latest incident the Employment Relations Authority found an Auckland restaurateur guilty of sexually harassing an employee.
Graeme George Edwards has been fined $15,000 in damages and lost pay after harassing, then sacking, a gay employee at his Mexican restaurant.
Hospitality insiders say it's just the tip of the iceberg and the behaviour is widespread.
"It's absolutely rife in small cafeterias and pubs and bars," says Jill Ovens from the Service and Food Workers Union. "The excuse people use is that it's a high pressure environment, but the reality is that that's not appropriate behaviour."
A recent Massey University study into workplace bullying found it was an extensive problem across the hospitality industry, with researchers identifying what they call the "Gordon Ramsay effect" where workers are starting to emulate the abusive TV chef.
Restaurateur Tony Astle says other problems stem from an underlying drug culture.
"They might be on P, they might be on something else. It's usually P," he says.
And Astle says rogue operators are also a problem. "It seems to be an industry that dodgy people can get into."
He wants to see people subjected to police checks before getting a restaurant licence.
"If you're going to be a manager running a restaurant with young people in it there should be a code you have to fit in to."
A police check may have caught out Edwards who ran a brothel back in Sydney and was charged with kidnapping its manager.
Edwards has now fled the country, owing the thousands in damages to the former employee he made so miserable in New Zealand.
